Week 9 Mental Training – Emotional Mastery and Vanquishing Ghosts

This week is a continuation of last week’s emotional focus. The first step is awareness, so tracking our emotions throughout last week allowed us to be aware of tendencies, patterns and thought traps. I’ve never really kept a food diary, but I imagine it’s much the same in terms of realizing you are mindlessly eating extra sugar or snacks that you weren’t aware of, or that maybe the “about 2 cups of coffee per day,” estimate you rattle off is, in fact, more like 3-4 cups per day and you didn’t even realize it. Or, conversely, you don’t eat nearly as many vegetables as you think you do. That’s what tracking emotions is like. For me, it’s an “oh shit, I feel frustration all the time and it’s not actually linked to events.” Once you know better, you can take action.

That’s the hard part though. This week is the action bit, where you look at the emotions on your list – those that you love to replay over and over again – and come up with ways to make them work for you instead of against you. Have you ever given your dog a toy and he’s into it for 10 minutes, then can’t be assed to even keep track of it until you show interest in it for a minute and then all of a sudden it’s his favorite thing again? Or, like you don’t really crave a particular food until you decide that you’re not going to eat it anymore and then it’s all you want like you fucking life depends on it? That’s what these damn emotions are like. Once I told myself that I’m going to stop feeling frustrated, overwhelmed and sorry for myself for performing badly in parts of training – simply by making the stated decision to stop doing it – suddenly my mind is all about clinging to those thoughts and emotions with a vice-grip. The grooves are already worn in, so I fall into those patterns pretty easily, but getting out of them is much harder right now than it was when I wasn’t as aware or determined to teach myself how to recover out of those thoughts and emotions more readily. It’s a motherf*cker of a problem.

Niyi refers to “Boogie Man” emotions and triggers. His example in a podcast is squats. He hates squats, so on the days he knows he has to do them, he wakes up pissed off or already dreading them. Everyone has these triggers: talking to your sister who makes you feel like shit about yourself, cleaning the car, homework, double shifts at work. There are a million examples. For me, I have a bunch of them, but one particular Boogie Man is when Kevin does a live stream of my padwork. I don’t come to it with a neutral mind, or better yet an enthusiastic mind. Rather, I immediately hate the idea and try to wiggle my way out of it, or just start pouting immediately because I already feel like I did a shitty job and embarrassed myself. I’ve actually never had a truly bad experience from these live streams – ever. I’ve never super embarrassed myself or gotten terrible, hurtful comments, nada, nothing. I just don’t like being “on the spot” or feel some kind of pressure to perform, so it sends me into this snit regardless of not having a “good” reason or precedent. Yesterday, Kevin didn’t come to my private session with Yodkhunpon in order to allow me the kind of freedom to just play around that not being observed might award me. It was great; I did just play with Khun the whole time and had a serious confidence boost and a grand time, unwitnessed. That’s what I think I will get by not having a live stream of my padwork, although that’s not what happens because I don’t actually let go and just be free and playful all the time. I was ready to be bad in padwork, which is why I told Kevin I didn’t want him to stream it, and then that’s exactly why I had such a hard time anyway, even without the camera on. The camera doesn’t actually do anything, I just link the thought pattern and emotional pitfall that I put myself in to the camera as a cause. It’s pure superstition; it’s fear of a Boogie Man. It’s something I have to tackle because I do think that streaming raw padwork footage is a good thing to do, it helps people see right into the process, unedited. And, I do need to be mentally tough about presenting myself on stage, because that is what fighting is. The better I can do that in training, the better in the ring I’ll be.

So, the work Niyi has us doing this week is coming up with an action plan to address the real causes of these emotional traps. So instead of just being passive to emotions that “happen to you,” you actively choose your emotions and even come up with strategies for how you will respond when those familiar grooves do pull you into them. When I was a kid, I saw a ghost in the hallway outside my bedroom. He was super scary: too tall for the space so he bent over in a weird hunch and had fingers that were too long for his hands and bizarre, 3-cornered hat. I hated him. One time, he came into my room and I panicked and hid under my blanket until I could muster the courage to run 10 feet across the room into my brother’s bed and beg for his protection. My mom “smudged” the room with sage to try to clear the spirit out, but the real gift she gave me was an action plan: when I see that ghost again, say in a firm and assertive voice, “I do not want you in here.” So, when I saw the ghost again and he was creeping toward my doorway, I didn’t panic and hide under my blanket or run into my brother’s bed, I had an action plan. I sat up and boldly took a deep breath, then barely squeaked out the words I’d been armed with. The ghost came into my room anyway and I cried, but, BUT, having simply been given something to do and having attempted to do it made me feel more in control. After a while, I stopped seeing him. It’s kind of like at the end of Labyrinth when the Goblin King is vanquished by the girl realizing, “you have no power over me.” If you can say that to your emotions, and then stick to it, eventually it will work. It’s not a magic fix but it’s something. And that’s what I’m trying to do with my Boogie Man emotions. It’s not a haha, I vanquish you! kind of solution, but by continually catching yourself and reversing the pattern, you will defeat your Boogie Man.

I’m still struggling with this, quite frankly because I feel bad about my flaws and patterns instead of just acknowledging them without judgement. Judgement of your tendencies does not help you change them, so cut that part of it out ASAP so you can just work on it. Because this is so hard, however, you can’t just find mental alternatives to your emotional patterns. If you feel a lack of confidence, you can’t just force yourself to feel its inverse like flipping a switch. Action is the primary objective. First, identify the emotion; then stop – stopping is the first action. Once you’ve interrupted it, then you figure out what you’re focusing on when in that emotion, refocus and orient yourself with a real emotion that counters the one you’re trying to override and then (this is best part of a self-determined response recipe that you come up with before hand) – and this is the most important part – do something with your body to ingrain the new emotion. I slouch a lot and try to be invisible, so I sit up straight. You can dust off your shoulder like a badass, or hold something in your hand and literally let go of it as a representation of letting go of the thought/emotion. Physical action. I get embarrassed and skip this part, but seriously, it’s a no-go if you don’t do it. Think of it like kissing the frog to turn him into a prince or waking up Sleeping Beauty. You can’t just think, “oh yeah, a kiss right, got it.” You have to do it. So, that’s my current struggle.

This week is huge for me, I think. It’s been incredibly difficult and I feel like I’ve been struggling more than usual, but likely that’s just being aware of it. I was telling Kevin this morning that simply defining something somehow proliferates it. Like how once a disease is defined by a set of symptoms, then suddenly there are way more cases of it because now it has a name. People aren’t sicker, they’re just grouped and labeled now. Same with identifying your emotions. I’m not a bigger asshole, I just see more clearly all the ways I’m being an asshole. But, exactly like disease, once you’ve defined it and studied it, then you can start to treat it. So that’s where I’m at.

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A 103 lb. (46 kg) female Muay Thai fighter. Originally I trained under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) and Kaensak sor. Ploenjit in New Jersey. I then moved to Thailand to train and fight full time in April of 2012, devoting myself to fighting 100 Thai fights, as well as blogging full time. Having surpassed 100 fights in 3 years here, my new goal is to fight an impossible 200 times in Thailand, as much as I possibly can, and to continue to write my experience.

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Sylvie’s Tips – Muay Thai Techniques

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above, my short Sylvie’s Tips on how I’m practicing Long Guard on the bag lately Everything little thing we do on the bag is repetition, even unconscious things can be “trained” into you. Simply taking a time out and walking back from the bag to reset during your rounds is that kind of small element. The further I get in my Muay Thai journey, the more I’m examining my bagwork (and shadow) for unconscious elements that I’m accidentally, or even non-efficiently training. It’s about awareness, so that I can figure out how to get my training into the ring with me

a cross position and slash motion on the arm swing The Muay Thai Kick Arm Swing Angle One of the things you learn when you come to Thailand longer term is that there are many, many ways of doing something. You may have learned that there is “one” way, or been corrected away from a “wrong” way, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, but technique in Thailand is developed somewhat individually, over a long period of time, influenced by different styles and elements from trainers. It is not uncommon to be corrected in different directions by different trainers,

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In my Dieselnoi Instruction post I made a video demonstrating some of the different sorts of knees used in Muay Thai. I’m not an expert in any of these, but I felt it might be good to just present an overview as a single, “proper” knee does not so much exist in Muay Thai, and there are many different techniques used for different purposes. Sometimes the focus is damage done, or accumulating points, or even just making sure the knee is clearly visible to the judges. As I say in the introduction to the video, these are all variations on knees and,

Some of My Best Posts

I’ve written before about how Muay Thai and fighting, to me, isn’t “violence.” My argument was that I have experienced real violence, the above is the story of my rape as a child, and that the consent and preparation involved in fighting isn’t the same. There is, however, a flavor of violence in Muay Thai – it is, as my old boxing coach Ray Valez would say, “the hurt business” and ultimately any fighter pushing for the highest form of the art of Muay Thai has to embrace this. Yesterday there was a young woman at my gym, Petchrungruang, who

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Stephan Fox is the General Secretary of the International Federation of Muaythai Amateur (IFMA) and the Vice-President of the World Muaythai Council (WMC). He is a huge figure in the recognition and development of amateur Muaythai in Thailand, as well as international competition with both the IFMA and WMC. After 20 years of work, the International Olympic Committee has just given provisional recognition for possible inclusion in the Olympics – let me repeat that: 20 years of work for that, and Mr. Fox’s response is, “right on schedule.” above, the full 30 minute interview with Stephan Fox We cover a range of

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First off, let me say it: weight, its not that big of a deal. There is a strong caveat to this, which is that it is a definite advantage, but so is height, or knowing the scoring system, or fighting since you were 10, or having a fight on your home turf, and so many other things. So while weight is always a potential advantage, it is just one among many possible advantages. You can beat people who have the weight advantage over you, just like you can with any of those other advantages. I know that in the West

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The Gendered Experience

When Taking Pity Takes Too Much We have a new woman at the gym. She’s only trained a handful of weeks, ever, and will have her first fight at the end of the month. So Pi Nu is really putting her through the trials to get her ready and I suspect that part of his Draconian directives that she clinch everyday comes from him watching me have success with clinch over the past 1.5 years that I’ve been under his instruction at the gym. He watched me go from unable to unstoppable, so I think he’s become a real believer

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Earlier this week I watched “Pumping Iron II: The Women,” a counter-part of sorts to the Arnold Schwarzenegger versus Lou Ferrigno docu-drama from 1977, focusing on the 1975 IFBB Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia competitions. “Pumping Iron II: The Women” focuses on the 1983 Caesar’s World Cup, a competition that is staged for the film and introduces the Australian phenom Bev Francis, a former Power Lifter making her debut in the US female body building competition circuit. The drama and intrigue of the film is whether Francis’ other-worldly physique, which tips more toward male bodybuilders than the small, moderately muscular

Afternoon training at Petchrungruang yesterday was a pendulum swinging between, “hey, that’s not so bad,” to “holy hell, I’m never going to make it through this.” I didn’t feel well, mostly fatigued and feeling a little bit flu-ish in the sore muscle and fever department. So of course, of course, as I’m pushing my way through bagwork I get called in to the ring to do sparring with this kid who has been kicking my ass in clinch the last couple days. So I sucked it up and got in the ring, focusing on just having the right kind of

Earlier in the day I had fought on the day reserved for honoring the 18th century Father of Muay Thai, Nai Khanomtom, amid the sacred ruins of the former halcyon capital of Siam, Ayutthaya. I was cut in the fight and bled profusely in late rounds, and the fight came very close to being called off by the ring doctor. As the doctor inspected me, during a timeout forced by the ref for my own good, the fight was held in the balance; with blood streaming down my face, I begged in Thai for the doctor to let me continue: “I

Laurie Berenson is a student of Casey VanBrookhoven in New Jersey, USA. While I’ve never met Laurie, she wrote to me through my Facebook Muay Thai page and it turns out we know and have trained with many of the same people (including Casey, who was a favorite sparring partner for me back in Jersey because, despite his being so much bigger than I am, he sparred hard and made me work for anything I landed). When I first heard from Laurie I was taken by how similar her seemingly-instantaneous affinity for Muay Thai was to my own. Once you

my interview of Chocolate at Petchrungruang in Pattaya (above) Chocolate lets out these “oh-hoy!” exclamations when I land a good knee or give her a quick turn in the clinch. They’re similar to the “oi!” of calling out a point in the Thai habit, but there’s a small hint of protest in the sound as well – it’s joyful, but it’s got this wonderful, “oh no you didn’t!” hint to it as well. And she’ll get that point back, no doubt. Chocolate doesn’t stop. We were in the smaller ring at Petchrungruang, where the kids tend to gather and just

In addition to being very committed to training and fighting in Muay Thai as much as I can in Thailand, I also have a deep academic root in me and I revel in exploring abstract concepts and concrete facts that help to better understand one’s place and one’s meaning in the world and the liberties awarded and denied through inclusion and exclusion. Unfortunately there is a dearth of academic study of Muay Thai and even less that is produced in English; the articles that have been written are somewhat dispersed and at times hard to find, so below I’ve compiled

Surfing the Chaos I’ve known Emma for a few years now. We actually met through online communication and I forget that we didn’t actually meet each other in person until a little over a year ago. I really like Emma and recently I was scrolling through a feed of our private messages on Facebook in order to show something she’d sent me to my Thai friend and my friend remarked, “wow, you write so much! It’s like a book!” Yeah, we talk a lot. Which made me realize with surprise that I’ve not yet interviewed Emma. I’ve certainly thought to